


you have always been my gravity

by alltheglitters



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheglitters/pseuds/alltheglitters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was waiting for him, waiting to be pulled into his wild, wild world – a backwards tale of time-travel and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you have always been my gravity

**Author's Note:**

> notes: for emmy, who becomes of age on the 28th of december. thank you for being the most wonderful, spazziest friend ever. this is the brainchild of catchtheskies on livejournal, thank you.
> 
> disclaimer: in its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to bbc, this work of fiction is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. no profit is being made from this work. inspired by doctor who.

vi.

She is a girl, it is as simple as that, who always –

Waited.

Inside the lecture hall, Gwen remains as quiet as the old piano at her father’s house. She waits for a ghost to play the first note.

There are muffled sounds when the teacher claps her hands, saying, “'Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?' The paper’s due next Thursday.”

 

 

Philosophy and Theology become foreign topics when magic comes into play.

 

 

It is when she walks through the corridor that she sees him. And she’s been waiting for what seems like months. Merlin grins at her, his blue eyes shining. _Has it really been that long?_ His red t-shirt has holes around the sleeve, his jeans are tatty, but his Converses are squeaky-clean. If she doesn’t know better, she’d say that he looks as though he has journeyed to the end of time and back. (He gets nervous. She knows this.) He scratches his ear, she remembering this tiny idiosyncrasy.

“Are you lost?” She sounds playful, her tongue making that endearing _tut-tut_ sound.

He chuckles. He’s missed her. “No... Well, not really. I’m bored.”

“Did you ever find that universe?”

He brushes her hair aside. “My universe is right here.” He puts a finger to her lips as she breathes into his hand. “Gwen, come here,” he whispers apologetically, pulling her into the closet, into his embrace - as a blue aura appears, she sees his long fingers. Warm to the touch, she recognizes the jolt of electricity. And off they go. (She does not even write down the assignment.)

 

 

v.

His cheeks are pink. Is it because they are in close proximity or is it motion sickness? He loosens his grip on her, feigning a cough.

Gwen Sareine is holding a textbook. Her A-Levels are approaching and she should really be at home studying. Instead, she’s here. “Where are we?”

He pulls at his hair. It’s shaped like a dodgy mushroom. “I think that we’re possibly… somewhere between the fifth and tenth century.” He licks his lips. “Probably, or maybe third century. I… uh…”

 

 

“I hate this,” he admits. “I have no idea where we are…”

She throws a cushion at him as they climb into the tent. “What do you have to do again, Merlin?”

He sounds defeated, fiddling with pebbles in his hand. “My task is to pass this clock to the visitor, whoever that is, by eleven.”

“Do you have to?” She pulls the blanket over them both.

“It’s a prophecy.”

“How do you know you’re right?”

“I don’t.”

She lays a kiss on his cheek, falling asleep in his arms.

 

 

“Since the start, I told you, Gwen, I told you that you never had to come with me…”

His eyes, like hers, are red and watery.

“I told you that we could get stuck in this mess and you didn’t listen. You just wanted to _come along_!”

She shakes her head. “I wanted to keep you safe.”

 

 

But he is safe, always has been. “I’m sorry,” he tells her one morning after breakfast.

She shrugs and he knows it’s okay. She doesn’t fully forgive him, but he’s halfway there.

 

 

iv.

It is his destiny, he tells her. He has fun with it, sometimes. But there are days when he learns that there are things that can’t be undone; he needs to fix this; if he doesn’t, who will?

 

 

When they are sixteen, she discovers a café. She instructs him to meet her there. She orders him a caramel latte, and although he’s more of a tea sort of bloke, he takes a sip. And it’s sort of sweet, exhilarating on his lips.

 

 

He watches from afar. Her skin looks golden through the window. She’s doodling, tapping her foot on the floor. She draws a few planets and a boy with large ears. She has never had any artistic capabilities, like him, but he loves her regardless, even then. That’s when guilt courses through his veins; he has no right to change her, even if she doesn’t know better.

 

 

(Their first kiss is a disaster.) She finds him at the playground one afternoon, standing on the seat of a swing. He casts a spell to make it move to and fro. His eyes dart to meet hers.

“Had a good day?”

He’s moody, but she doesn’t blame him. It mustn’t be easy, travelling by yourself.

She raises an eyebrow, pressing her palm on his neck. There is a red gash on his sharp cheekbone, the boy had cut himself shaving. Her fingers graze his jaw. A smile tugs at his lips, he is drawing closer to her, but accidents, as they always do, happen.

“Ow!” He winces as their heads bang together. As if that isn’t bad enough… When he backs away, his pinky is stuck to the chain. “Can we – can, um, can – ”

“Can we try that again?” This time she doesn’t wait, she simply presses her lips on his.

Strong emotions empower him, and he sends them to the future.

2045 has never looked so good.

 

 

iii.

They sit, watching a myriad of stars and listening to the sound of crickets.

Leaning against the rock, he recalls the names of several constellations; she imagines that he might only be right five percent of the time.

The Saucepan hardly resembles a saucepan.

When he hears this, he conjures her a lilac. His voice is like the violin. He continues talking about the _Syringa_ , which is a genus of flowering plants belonging in the olive family, native to southern Europe. He speaks quickly, like there many things he’ll soon forget. Betelgeuse flickers in the background. She doesn’t even notice as Merlin shivers, wrapping his arms around her waist. She rests her head on his chest.

 

 

She gets mad when he doesn’t take her to Thailand during the summer. She hears that it’s beautiful. He mumbles, “Sorry, Gwen,” but in he doesn’t sound apologetic at all. When she gets home, she suspects that it has something to do with that History essay on her desk. He doesn’t want to disrupt her more than he already has.

 

 

(Her life resembles a fairytale, but the kind where the child gets sick of the story before Mommy reads the ending. He rips half of the book out, just so that they’d _get there faster_. Yes, that is their story.)

 

 

After dinner, Gwen’s father leaves the kitchen door open. He’s by the stove, reading the newspaper to them both, chuckling at the “Oddly Enough” headlines as he hands them Christmas pudding.

A fire burns inside of Merlin, and he is struck by the tenderness of the scene. He wishes that Gwen can keep him here. He would trade what little he has for just a peaceful day with them.

It might make all the difference to this lost boy.

 

 

ii.

In her spare time, she flicks through a book in the library. Is the phenomena of time-travelling something that has never been discovered? Is his gift a burden? Are there side-effects?

Could she be part of it?

She wants to. She is tired of waiting. "In the wings" is not a place she wants to be, when all she longs to do is to explore the depths of the world with him.

 

 

Then there are times when he shows up in the middle of Mathematics. He slowly takes her hand, cocking his head to the side.

When she sees him, she is speechless.

Into his Camelot they go.

 

 

i.

When he disappears, a gush of wind enters the windows. It shifts his bowl, spilling spaghetti all over the table.

 

 

“Do you go to school?”

“Um, I have... I’m busy.” A seven year-old Merlin points to the sky. “I make sure the clouds stay there, I make sure that the trees are standing upright and that’s… that’s what I do.”

“How?”

He hands her a rose. “I… I don’t know.”

“But how? You must be doing something!” She clips the flower in her diary.

“I don’t know, Gwen… Well, I go away, to… to make sure nothing goes wrong, I think.”

She pours the milk into a glass cup he has just conjured. “Can you take me with you?”

He looks pensive for a while. “It’s dangerous.”

“Even better.”

“I don’t know where our universe is, I don’t know why it exists.”

She smacks her lips. “I can help, you know. Mrs. Dodger says that I’m brilliant.”

 

 

“If you’re not going to school with me, you don’t know how to write, you can’t count to thirty. How are you going to find a job, to make money?”

 

 

Guinevere longs for an adventure; she longs for the day he will extend his hand and pull her into the Victorian era, or the age of pirates, or even to South Africa, but for now, she will be fine. After all, Guinevere Sareine would rather be the girl who waited, the girl who paused for _him_ , than the girl who never did anything at all.

 

 

It is when she walks through the corridor that she sees him staring at her.

And she’s been waiting for what seems like millennia. Merlin grins at her, his bright eyes twinkling.

Was it only yesterday?

 

 

FIN.


End file.
